


A Mistaken Assumption, Repeated

by sadlikeknives



Category: Forever (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-23
Updated: 2014-11-23
Packaged: 2018-02-26 18:02:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2661317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadlikeknives/pseuds/sadlikeknives
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You know, I thought you two had a thing at first."</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Mistaken Assumption, Repeated

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vaznetti](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vaznetti/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, Vaznetti!
> 
> Canon-compliant up to 1x8, "The Ecstasy of Agony."

Detective Martinez came home with him for dinner one night (it's not like Henry exactly had to twist her arm, not when Abraham was cooking) and admitted, after the three of them had killed a pot of Abraham's excellent _boeuf bourguignon_ and the accompanying bottle of wine, and started in on its friend, "You know, I thought you two had a thing at first."

"A thing?" Henry inquired in his most arch, precise tones. He was messing with her, of course; he was far from unfamiliar with the implications. Abraham gave him a ‘be nice’ sort of look that slid into a grin, because it was still always funny, and topped up his glass.

She waved her glass around, nearly sloshing perfectly good wine out of it. "You know, a thing."

"Ah, a _thing_." She wasn’t the first, though she was the first in a while; she probably wouldn't be the last, but Henry still could not resist turning to Abraham and telling him, conversational, "New York's finest, right here."

"Oh, come on," Jo protested. "It made as much sense as anything! Why else would he put up with you and your weirdness in his basement?”

"Don’t be ridiculous, Detective. Abraham is _far_ out of my league." He said it with pride: his son was quite a catch. Abraham’s taste in women was, quite frankly, alarming, but there was nothing to be done about that except try not to disapprove too vocally, especially when Henry didn't really have room to throw stones.

"He does have substantially fewer fines for public nudity on his record," she said with the careful consideration of a woman halfway in her cups.

"You know, I'd been wondering when that was going to come up," Abraham said. Jo didn't notice that he was perhaps overly cheery for the situation, which was a good thing, because explaining would have been even more embarrassing, for Henry at least: they'd had a bet going on it, and Henry had lost.

"Or at least I assume you do," Jo amended. "I haven't actually had a reason to look you up, Abe." Then she refocused on Henry. "What—what is the deal, man?"

"Can't a man have hobbies?" he asked, defensive, and Abraham snorted with laughter.

"Okay, your creepy basement, that’s a hobby--I assume--but, public naked hobbies?"

"He goes swimming in the river," Abraham told her, giving the usual story, and Jo looked at Henry, eyes wide with astonishment.

"Are you suicidal? In the _river_?”

"It's perfectly safe," he insisted. "There was a triathlon recently, if they can swim in the river, there's no reason for anyone else not to do it."

She didn't have anything to refute that with, so she circled back to, "Okay, but all the public nudity."

Abraham expanded upon his previous explanation: "He goes swimming in the river naked. I don't claim to understand why."

Henry didn't even pretend that he intended to explain. "And this being New York, my clothes aren't always where I left them. Which would be just as true if I were swimming in trunks."

"Yeah," Jo acknowledged, "but you'd have a lot fewer fines to your account." He could only shrug, because that was true, but it wasn't like, in reality, he could do anything about it. "Don't take this the wrong way, but you are _so weird_ , Morgan."

He could not contest the charge. "I told you. Abraham is _far_ out of my league."

"If I was going to date a guy," Abraham agreed, "it would be one with better sense than to go swimming naked in the East River."

"How do you put up with him, anyway?" she asked Abraham. “I mean, I understand _why_ , he’s like family, whatever, but _how_?”

He shrugged. "Eh, he owns half the building." Henry feigned annoyance, but he knew it to be both obfuscation and truth rolled together: there have surely been times Abraham would have liked to have tossed him out on his ear. Most of them involve opera before eight in the morning, or a phone call to please come get him and bring clothing.

Detective Martinez had drunk enough wine that they insisted on calling her a cab home, and when Henry walked her down and put her in it, she told him, "You know, you two _would_ make a cute couple."

"Abraham is like family," he reminded her, the closest thing to the truth he can tell. "And he can do better."

"He can do _so much_ better," she agreed. She was rude when she was tipsy, but he didn’t mind, not when she was saying nice things about his son.

"Drink some water, Detective, and I'll see you tomorrow morning." When he returned to the apartment above the shop, Abraham was still savoring the last of the wine. "I know, I know," he said before Abraham could say anything.

"All the dishes!" Abraham crowed, pleased as a cat with a canary. "All the dishes, for a month!"

"But!" Henry reminded him. "I was right, too!" Going back to the seventies, when their apparent ages had made the truth seem unreasonable and their respective accents had made even being related look unlikely, Abraham was always a bit surprised when someone assumed they were a couple. Henry didn't know why; he didn't always appear as odd on the surface as he did lately (now that he'd stopped bothering to care what most other people thought), and Abraham was, as he’d told Detective Martinez, quite a catch.

Abraham was rather less pleased to be reminded of this. "A detective should know better," he grumped.

"Have fun doing all the dusting in the shop," Henry said, clapping him on the shoulder before he started gathering up the dishes. " _Also_ for a month."

"Oh," Abraham said, like he'd just remembered something. "I have a date tomorrow night. Don't wait up."

There were some things one never really needed to hear their son say, no matter how old he got. "A date?" Henry asked. "One of your ladies from the internet?"

"Okay, you could stand to work on pronouncing 'internet' less like it's in a foreign language you don't speak--" Henry ignored him, "and, no, actually. With, ah. With the Frenchman."

Henry almost dropped the plates. "A _date_ with the _Frenchman_? Abraham, are you really sure that's wise?"

"Well, no, obviously, but I'm doing it anyway." And that, Henry supposed, was pretty much that, especially considering that Abraham had had the courtesy to not point out that Henry had, in the last few months, gone on three dates with a professional dominatrix. Abe was clearly mulling something over, but it took until Henry had finished with the dishes for him to come out with it. "Have you ever, you know, with a guy?"

Henry had been expecting this question for literally decades, but he could not resist saying in lieu of an answer, "Abraham, really, such prudishness does not become you." Abraham gave him a dirty look, and he relented. "Now and again. I was in love with a man once." He considered leaving it at that, but then he told Abraham, because Abraham was the only person he could tell, "He died young. Tuberculosis." Abraham wordlessly reached over and poured more wine into Henry's glass. Henry took a deep, bracing breath. "Well. Have fun with the Frenchman, if the Frenchman does indeed believe in fun," he declared, and retreated to his lab.

***

It was hard to be Abraham's father and to not be his father, even after decades of practice at it. Somewhere along the way, Abraham had gotten out of the habit of calling Henry 'Dad,' even in private. It would have been easy enough to pass off as a joke between them—that's what they used to do, after Abraham became too old for anyone to think him Henry's son, citing Henry's tendency to fret—but it was probably for the best, one less thing to worry about. Henry almost didn't even notice any more, except for when he did, and then it ached somewhere in his chest. He wondered if Abraham missed it, too, but he never knew how to ask. When he looked at Abraham he still saw his son, that tiny baby all those years ago, the little boy clinging to his leg on the first day of school. But he wasn't that little boy any more, hadn't been for a long time, and Henry...Henry, as always, was exactly the same.

Abraham was beginning to face his mortality, and so he could not comprehend why Henry craved it, and Henry could not quite say to him, "No man should have to bury his child," but there it was. (Not yet, he told himself, another ten or fifteen years, surely, at least, but he knew he was bargaining, and that he was tricking himself, that death could come in like a thief at any time.)

He tried not to _act_ like Abraham's father, at least, though he didn't always succeed. Henry was, after all, a worrier at heart. And so, when Abraham came in during breakfast, he interrupted Henry's internal lecture on the subject of Abraham having been a grown man for half a century and more now and more than capable of making his own decisions, even if he _was_ out with the most terrifying woman Henry had ever known.

"Did you sleep at all?" Abraham asked as he hung up his coat.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Henry replied, like a man who had not spent half the night doing absolutely nothing in his lab. Abraham, of course, saw right through him, but he was decent enough not to call him on it. "Did you have a nice time with the Frenchman?" he asked, badly pretending to be more interested in the newspaper than Abraham's response.

"The Frenchman," Abraham replied as he poured himself a cup of coffee, "thinks it's nice that we have an open relationship." Because he had somehow inherited his mother's evil sense of humor, he waited until Henry was taking a drink of coffee to say it, although black coffee up the nose _did_ serve to wake him the rest of the way up rather effectively.

"Are we _doing_ something?" he asked when he could speak again, trying not to snicker. "That's twice in a week!"

"I don't know!" Abe exclaimed, throwing up the hand that didn't have a cup of coffee in it. "Maureen thought you had to be my son, and that was horrifying enough, but then I thought, 'Oh, well, I guess that's where we are now, had to happen eventually,' but now this! Twice! In two days!"

"Did you correct her?" he asked, trying for dignified and landing squarely in an undignified snicker.

"Of course I didn't _correct her_ , come on, this is priceless," Abraham said. "The Frenchman can't buy a clue! When does that ever happen? I want to enjoy it while it lasts."

"You're a very bad man, Abraham," Henry told him, and toasted him with his coffee cup. Abraham just grinned at him; Henry, because he could be a very bad man sometimes, too, waited until _he_ was taking a drink to say, "Let's just hope the Frenchman's misconception doesn't lead her to get any... _ideas_." Henry let himself bask in Abraham's astonished choking for a moment before glancing at the clock and realizing, "I must be going, I'll be late."

"Say hi to the lovely Detective Martinez for me," Abraham suggested.

Henry shot him a dirty look as he put his coat on. "No, you're not going to ask her out."

"I wasn't talking about me."

And that wasn't going to happen either. "Yes, thank you, that is just what my Thursday needs, a human resources complaint." Abraham rolled his eyes at him, and Henry pretended not to see it.

It was not, overall, shaping up to be a good day, between the lack of sleep, having to make his own coffee, and, well, the Frenchman, but when he finally got to work there was a fresh murder victim the police had taken for a heart attack waiting for him, so that was definitely the day looking up.

He didn't really think anything more of Abraham and the Frenchman, aside from the general sort of worry, until about three weeks later, when Abraham greeted him at the door when he returned home from work with, "The Frenchman wants to know if you want to have a threesome."

Henry paused in the act of removing his scarf. "...with...?" he finally asked. Abraham just looked at him, waiting for it to click, which it finally did. "See, this is what you get for letting these sorts of delusions linger."

"Oh, come on, it's hilarious!" Abraham protested. Now it was Henry's turn to look at him until Abraham conceded, "And...extremely disturbing. But hilarious!"

"You did tell her no, I hope."

"Of course I told her no, what kind of a weirdo do you take me for?"

"You really must tell her the truth, Abraham." Abraham gave him that look again, and Henry rolled his eyes at him. "Not _the truth_ , but—oh, you know what I meant. Don't tell her I'm your son, though, for God's sake." Horrible thought, Abraham setting his bedtimes and telling him to clean his room.

"I think the accents might throw a wrench in that one."

"Yes," Henry agreed, dry, "because fathers and sons always have the same accents, of course." Abraham rolled his eyes at him.

Abraham conceded with a shrug that he did know what he meant, but said, "But, I mean, she's the Frenchman." Henry heard his true concern in it: What if she took offense?

"Tell her you meant to correct the misconception, but I thought it too funny." Henry was, as ever, prepared to offer himself up as the sacrificial lamb. After all, if the Frenchman _really_ got mad about it and ordered a hit, it wasn't like it would take. And, "She _does_ have a sense of humor, Abe," he pointed out, gentle, aware this was more about Abraham not wanting to ruin things with a rather formidable woman, more than fearing for himself. "It'll be fine," he assured him, and hoped it was true. And if the Frenchman was going to become a more permanent presence in their lives, well, who could have anticipated it? "Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be in my laboratory until the horror of this thought has passed."

***

The next time he saw the Frenchman was on police business, not that you could have told by the way she greeted him by pointing at him with the ceremonial dagger she happened to have in her hand when he and Detective Martinez walked through the door, and told him, "You're a bad man."

"Oh, come on, it was funny," he defended, spreading his hands like 'look, no harm done,' (Really, originally, 'look, I'm not armed' but people did tend to forget that. Well, maybe not the Frenchman.) "It's not like you're the first to have made that mistake." Not that he could tell her, but the first had been back in the seventies; the most recent before the detective had been more than ten years ago, before Abraham began to look old enough that most people assumed he wouldn't have held Henry's interest. Truth be told, he liked the Frenchman and Jo both better for _not_ having made that assumption.

"Hmph," said the Frenchman, putting down the dagger and folding her arms. "Well, if you ever reconsider, do let me know."

Henry wondered vaguely what version of the truth Abraham had told her, that she thought reconsidering might be on the agenda, but just to be on the safe side he told her, "I don't see that happening, but in the unlikely event." She seemed to be satisfied, because she nodded once before turning to Jo, all smiles—and wasn't that alarming—to ask what brought her back to her shop under such considerably better circumstances. Crisis, Henry thought, averted, and until his expertise was needed, he turned his thoughts to the question of the Frenchman's real name. Presumably she had one, and presumably Jo knew it. The question, though, was whether Abraham did, and whether he cared enough to ask. He hadn't really made up his mind when his attention was called back to the conversation.

Following the previous case that had brought him to the Frenchman's door, and all that it had unfortunately involved, she was rather more amenable to assisting law enforcement this time around, and they left with the information they needed and her card, for Jo. "What was that all about?" Jo asked once they were safely on the sidewalk.

Henry feigned confusion. "Beg pardon?"

"You know, that whole flirty 'you're a bad, bad man,' bit."

"Abraham may have allowed the Frenchman to labor under a misconception for a time," he allowed, "and I did nothing to prevent him."

"Oh?"

"Specifically, that Abraham and I were romantically involved."

"Ha!" Jo exclaimed. "So I'm not the only one!"

"No," he agreed, smiling. "You're not the only one."

"I was thinking about it, though, and you're right, you know," she said, clapping him companionably on the shoulder. "Abe is _way_ out of your league."

Henry couldn't help but smile fondly. "Don't I know it," he agreed.

"Come on. I'll buy you a hot dog."

He followed, wondering how amusing her reaction would be if he mentioned what else the Frenchman had said. He would wait to find out until after she'd paid for lunch, he thought. Abraham would approve.


End file.
